Sex and Sexability: Tips for the Literary Lover

By Mallory Ortberg

Never break character.

MichaelDalder/Reuters

Every Tuesday, have sex with an elderly man with a disarmingly positive outlook on life. Address him as Morrie, no matter what his name is.

Crash your plane in the desert. Come to know the long, burning
ache of prolonged solitude. Allow -- even encourage -- a fox to die.
Draw a snake. Spend three
days exploring the body of a wandering naïf. Despair at your
inability to communicate even the simplest of your thoughts to another
living person; weep at
the poverty of speech. Cover every flower you can find with glass
and threaten a tiger; it's The Little Prince, and you will never again know the
quiet pleasure of a loving companion. Have sex with the drawing you made of that snake earlier.

Have sex with a lion. Have sex with a witch. Long hopelessly for a
wardrobe you cannot afford at a secondhand shop. Have sex with the lion
again, only this time it's not the same, not now that you know what
you're missing in not being able to be with the wardrobe. The witch
stops taking your calls; you hear through a mutual friend she thinks
you're emotionally unstable and cold in bed. Silently agree with her.

Sink
into your most regressive self -- give in to every selfish, tribal,
racist impulse that slips across the hateful, shallow transom of your
mind. Have
children intermittently; let them raise themselves. Push away
everyone who was ever kind to you. Let nothing hold you back in your
feverish quest to make
money. Wear hoop skirts and call everyone "darlin'." Seduce your
best friend's husband, then watch her die. Avoid introspection at all
costs. Promise
yourself you'll reevaluate your choices "tomorrow." When tomorrow
finally comes, there is nothing left to do but die. You're Scarlett
O'Hara and you're
beautiful.

Have sex with a giant bug, the biggest you can find. This works for Metamorphosis and also The Phantom Tollbooth.

Vow to have sex every day in the coming month. Join an online forum designed for
keeping you accountable for having sex at least once a day for the whole
month.
Update your Facebook status to reflect your commitment to daily
sex-having for the entirety of the month. Ask that your friends bear with
you and understand
if you're unable to honor normal social commitments during this
month full of sex. Buy 30 days worth of prophylactics; display them
prominently on your
coffee table.

Your partner is Watson and you are Holmes. Deny all overtures for sex. Deny them repeatedly, claiming the act would only distract you. Ingest
cocaine. Finally agree to have sex, but demean his intelligence both during the act and afterwards. Find more cocaine. There will never be enough cocaine
to make you forget it is impossible for the two of you to ever truly connect, as he is unable to keep up with you mentally and you see no value in feeling
empathy. Buy a large black dog and fake your own death, in whatever order you prefer. Decide you are only capable of feeling physical attraction to
waterfalls and the sensation of awe. Become a hoarder, but only hoard greatcoats. Solve more crimes. Solve everything. Solve yourself. Disappear forever --
disappear retroactively. Never exist.

Was Steel Magnolias a book? They probably had some ghostwriter churn one out after the movie did so well. Find a picture of Dolly Parton and
have loud, frequent arguments with it in front of your window. Drink improbable quantities of orange juice while shaking violently. Be fragrant and
willowy whenever possible, but make sure you can still be smelted using the Bessemer process. Find Tom Skeritt. Take his kidney. Have sex with him if
there's time, but the kidney's the important part. Make sure you get the kidney.

Become intimate with a piece of liver. Serve it for dinner. It is Portnoy's Complaint. Later, write a thousand novels. Set all of them in New
Jersey. Announce you're retiring from intimacy with pieces of liver. You're Philip Roth and you're a genius. Assemble all the pieces of liver you've ever
masturbated on or with or into and take a long, slow look at them. Get in a fight with Wikipedia somehow; you're Philip Roth and everybody
else is garbage and imaginary.

Have sex with farmers. Have sex with Alton Brown while he's filming one of his Welch's grape juice commercials. Have sex when you're angry. Have sex with
Henry Fonda. It's The Grapes of Wrath and you're disgusting. Henry Fonda was an American icon and is also dead. Let him rest in peace.